A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Complete by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (page 5)

I turned to start, but the king had already started. He halted, and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not noticed us thus far, or spoken.

“Is it your husband?” the king asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he asleep?”

“God be thanked for that one charity, yes–these three hours. Where shall I pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now.”

I said:

“We will be careful. We will not wake him.”

“Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, none insult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together; we were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together. This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was no parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not but I went with him, my hand in his–my young soft hand, not this withered claw. Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and know it not; how could one go peace–fuller than that? It was his reward for a cruel life patiently borne.”

There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king’s bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition–I would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner’s garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and be comforted.

He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a flickering faint light of response in the child’s eyes, but that was all. The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came. I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade me, and said:

“No–she does not suffer; it is better so. It might bring her back to life. None that be so good and kind as ye are would do her that cruel hurt. For look you–what is left to live for? Her brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the Church’s curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her even though she lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I have not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here overhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left the poor thing forsaken–”

“She lieth at peace,” interrupted the king, in a subdued voice.

“I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness! Ah, my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon–thou’rt on thy way, and these be merciful friends that will not hinder.”

And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now in the glazing eyes. I saw tears well from the king’s eyes, and trickle down his face. The woman noticed them, too, and said:

“Ah, I know that sign: thou’st a wife at home, poor soul, and you and she have gone hungry to bed, many’s the time, that the little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the Church and the king.”

The king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still; he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the woman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allow nothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. This broke her down again, and there was another scene that was full of heartbreak. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled her to sketch her story.

“Ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it–for truly none of our condition in Britain escape it. It is the old, weary tale. We fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, that we lived and did not die; more than that is not to be claimed. No troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought them; then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed us. Years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees on our farm; in the best part of it, too–a grievous wrong and shame–”

“But it was his right,” interrupted the king.

“None denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what is the lord’s is his, and what is mine is his also. Our farm was ours by lease, therefore ’twas likewise his, to do with it as he would. Some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewn down. Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. Well, in his lordship’s dungeon there they lie, who saith there shall they lie and rot till they confess. They have naught to confess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain until they die. Ye know that right well, I ween. Think how this left us; a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was planted by so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day from pigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurt by any of our sort. When my lord’s crop was nearly ready for the harvest, so also was ours; when his bell rang to call us to his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that I and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, but for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined. All this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and so both the priest and his lordship fined us because their shares of it were suffering through damage. In the end the fines ate up our crop–and they took it all; they took it all and made us harvest it for them, without pay or food, and we starving. Then the worst came when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy–oh! a thousand of them!– against the Church and the Church’s ways. It was ten days ago. I had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest I said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due humility under the chastening hand of God. He carried my trespass to his betters; I was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my head and upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of Rome.

“Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. None has come near this hut to know whether we live or not. The rest of us were taken down. Then I roused me and got up, as wife and mother will. It was little they could have eaten in any case; it was less than little they had to eat. But there was water, and I gave them that. How they craved it! and how they blessed it! But the end came yesterday; my strength broke down. Yesterday was the last time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. I have lain here all these hours–these ages, ye may say–listening, listening for any sound up there that–”

She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried out, “Oh, my darling!” and feebly gathered the stiffening form to her sheltering arms. She had recognized the death-rattle.

CHAPTER XXX

THE TRAGEDY OF THE MANOR-HOUSE

At midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four corpses. We covered them with such rags as we could find, and started away, fastening the door behind us. Their home must be these people’s grave, for they could not have Christian burial, or be admitted to consecrated ground. They were as dogs, wild beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and smitten outcasts.

We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footsteps upon gravel. My heart flew to my throat. We must not be seen coming from that house. I plucked at the king’s robe and we drew back and took shelter behind the corner of the cabin.

“Now we are safe,” I said, “but it was a close call–so to speak. If the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt, he seemed to be so near.”

“Mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all.”

“True. But man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minute and let it get by and out of the way.”

“Hark! It cometh hither.”

True again. The step was coming toward us–straight toward the hut. It must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved our trepidation. I was going to step out, but the king laid his hand upon my arm. There was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft knock on the cabin door. It made me shiver. Presently the knock was repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice:

“Mother! Father! Open–we have got free, and we bring news to pale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and we may not tarry, but must fly! And–but they answer not. Mother! father!–”

I drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered:

“Come–now we can get to the road.”

The king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard the door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in the presence of their dead.

“Come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then will follow that which it would break your heart to hear.”

He did not hesitate this time. The moment we were in the road I ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed. I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut–I couldn’t bear it; I wanted to drive it out of my mind; so I struck into the first subject that lay under that one in my mind:

“I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing to fear; but if you have not had it also–”

He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his conscience that was troubling him:

“These young men have got free, they say–but _how_? It is not likely that their lord hath set them free.”

“Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped.”

“That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so, and your suspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear.”

“I should not call it by that name though. I do suspect that they escaped, but if they did, I am not sorry, certainly.”

“I am not sorry, I _think_–but–”

“What is it? What is there for one to be troubled about?”

“_If_ they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon them and deliver them again to their lord; for it is not seemly that one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and high-handed outrage from persons of their base degree.”

There it was again. He could see only one side of it. He was born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream. To imprison these men without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they were merely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord, no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men to break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing not to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew his duty to his sacred caste.

I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change the subject–and even then an outside matter did it for me. This was a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a small hill–a red glow, a good way off.

“That’s a fire,” said I.

Fires interested me considerably, because I was getting a good deal of an insurance business started, and was also training some horses and building some steam fire-engines, with an eye to a paid fire department by and by. The priests opposed both my fire and life insurance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to hinder the decrees of God; and if you pointed out that they did not hinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hard consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of God, and was just as bad. So they managed to damage those industries more or less, but I got even on my Accident business. As a rule, a knight is a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to pretty poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger, but even _he_ could see the practical side of a thing once in a while; and so of late you couldn’t clean up a tournament and pile the result without finding one of my accident-tickets in every helmet.

We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the meaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night. Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road plunged us at once into almost solid darkness–darkness that was packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. We groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and more distinct all the time. The coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in the lead. I ran against something–a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! That is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. It was a grewsome sight. Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge. No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn’t we? The lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and midnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected.

“If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord; so let him be. If others hanged him, belike they had the right–let him hang.”

“But–”

“But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And for yet another reason. When the lightning cometh again–there, look abroad.”

Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!

“It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you. Come–it is unprofitable to tarry here.”

There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmur no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men’s voices. A man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. They disappeared. Presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another. Then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire–it was a large manor-house, and little or nothing was left of it–and everywhere men were flying and other men raging after them in pursuit.

I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. We would better get away from the light, until matters should improve. We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood. From this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob. The fearful work went on until nearly dawn. Then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again.

We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us. Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be had. A woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the manor-house of Abblasoure. Yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. The king broke in:

“Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the Spotted Death.”

It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffle-iron face. I had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated. She made us entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely impressed by the king’s proposition; for, of course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king’s humble appearance who was ready to buy a man’s house for the sake of a night’s lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable.

We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity. And also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out of horse-feed. The woman told us about the affair of the evening before. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames. The country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master. He did not appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage. But after a while he was found–what was left of him–which was his corpse. It was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places.

Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough; my lord’s liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. The woman’s husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn. He was gone now to find out what the general result had been. While we were still talking he came back from his quest. His report was revolting enough. Eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire.

“And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?”

“Thirteen.”

“Then every one of them was lost?”

“Yes, all.”

“But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of the prisoners?”

The man looked puzzled, and said:

“Would one unlock the vaults at such a time? Marry, some would have escaped.”

“Then you mean that nobody _did_ unlock them?”

“None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken. None were taken.”

“Natheless, three did escape,” said the king, “and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered the baron and fired the house.”

I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects produced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that our hosts’ continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change, and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around toward other details of the night’s proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have it take that direction.

The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil’s whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.

This was depressing–to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the “poor white” did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was something–in fact, it was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn’t show on the outside.

Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the Southern “poor white” of the far future. The king presently showed impatience, and said:

“An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye the criminals will abide in their father’s house? They are fleeing, they are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track.”

The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute. I said:

“Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction I think they would try to take. If they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would try to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter.”

The last remark was for the king–to quiet him. On the road the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said:

“What relation were these men to you–cousins?”

He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling.

“Ah, my God, how know ye that?”

“I didn’t know it; it was a chance guess.”

“Poor lads, they are lost. And good lads they were, too.”

“Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?”

He didn’t quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly:

“Ye-s.”

“Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!”

It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel.

“Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me an I failed of my duty.”

“Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep still and let those men get away. They’ve done a righteous deed.”

He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time. He looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming, and then said in a cautious voice:

“From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, and seem not to be afraid?”

“They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, I take it. You would not tell anybody I said them?”

“I? I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first.”

“Well, then, let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeating it. I think devil’s work has been done last night upon those innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved. If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck.”

Fear and depression vanished from the man’s manner, and gratefulness and a brave animation took their place:

“Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded. I helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master’s cause; the others helped for none other reason. All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite’s tear, for in that lies safety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I am ready.”

There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed–even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them–even in the Germans–if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur’s days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while.

CHAPTER XXXI

MARCO

We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked. We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again. And meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur’s kingdom: the behavior–born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste–of chance passers-by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap’s nose was in the air–he couldn’t even see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. They implored help, but they were so beside themselves that we couldn’t make out what the matter was. However, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for.

It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time very well. I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to. A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head during the afternoon. A man who hasn’t had much experience, and doesn’t think, is apt to measure a nation’s prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the nation is prosperous; if low, it isn’t. Which is an error. It isn’t what sum you get, it’s how much you can buy with it, that’s the important thing; and it’s that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. In the North a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the South he got fifty–payable in Confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel. In the North a suit of overalls cost three dollars–a day’s wages; in the South it cost seventy-five– which was two days’ wages. Other things were in proportion. Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they were in the South, because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the other had.

Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation– lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and even some gold–but that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith’s. I dropped in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold piece. They furnished it–that is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where I got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and where I was going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, I went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily; told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wife was a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was a Prohibitionist, and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn’t give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. Yes, they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden. He could do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith’s thought, too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration.

Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was already glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped the names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. It was very gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure.

I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting fellow among them was the blacksmith, Dowley. He was a live man and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was very proud of having such a man for a friend. He had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big establishment which bought so much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar terms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I fraternized at once; I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under me in the Colt Arms Factory. I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to come out to Marco’s Sunday, and dine with us. Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee accepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished at the condescension.

Marco’s joy was exuberant–but only for a moment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it was the expense. He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial days were numbered. However, on our way to invite the others, I said:

“You must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also allow me to pay the costs.”

His face cleared, and he said with spirit:

“But not all of it, not all of it. Ye cannot well bear a burden like to this alone.”

I stopped him, and said:

“Now let’s understand each other on the spot, old friend. I am only a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor, nevertheless. I have been very fortunate this year–you would be astonished to know how I have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I say I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never care _that_ for the expense!” and I snapped my fingers. I could see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco’s estimation, and when I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for style and altitude. “So you see, you must let me have my way. You can’t contribute a cent to this orgy, that’s _settled_.”

“It’s grand and good of you–”

“No, it isn’t. You’ve opened your house to Jones and me in the most generous way; Jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before you came back from the village; for although he wouldn’t be likely to say such a thing to you–because Jones isn’t a talker, and is diffident in society–he has a good heart and a grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and your wife have been very hospitable toward us–”

“Ah, brother, ’tis nothing–_such_ hospitality!”

“But it _is_ something; the best a man has, freely given, is always something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right along beside it–for even a prince can but do his best. And so we’ll shop around and get up this layout now, and don’t you worry about the expense. I’m one of the worst spendthrifts that ever was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend– but never mind about that–you’d never believe it anyway.”

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged. The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a hand’s-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present. Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of that swell company, and I didn’t know just how to get at it– with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I had already been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial sort; so I said:

“And Marco, there’s another thing which you must permit–out of kindness for Jones–because you wouldn’t want to offend him. He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so diffident he couldn’t venture it himself, and so he begged me to buy some little things and give them to you and Dame Phyllis and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from him–you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing– and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his idea was, a new outfit of clothes for you both–”

“Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be. Consider the vastness of the sum–”

“Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment, and see how it would seem; a body can’t get in a word edgeways, you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn’t good form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don’t check it. Yes, we’ll step in here now and price this man’s stuff–and don’t forget to remember to not let on to Jones that you know he had anything to do with it. You can’t think how curiously sensitive and proud he is. He’s a farmer–pretty fairly well-to-do farmer– an I’m his bailiff; _but_–the imagination of that man! Why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you’d think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer–especially if he talked agriculture. He _thinks_ he’s a Sheol of a farmer; thinks he’s old Grayback from Wayback; but between you and me privately he don’t know as much about farming as he does about running a kingdom–still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you might die before you got enough of it. That will please Jones.”

It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character; but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and can’t remember it more than about half the time, you can’t take too many precautions.

This was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything in it, in small quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. I concluded I would bunch my whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any more. So I got rid of Marco, by sending him off to invite the mason and the wheelwright, which left the field free to me. For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way; it’s got to be theatrical or I don’t take any interest in it. I showed up money enough, in a careless way, to corral the shopkeeper’s respect, and then I wrote down a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if he could read it. He could, and was proud to show that he could. He said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read and write. He ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a little concern like that. I was not only providing a swell dinner, but some odds and ends of extras. I ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday. He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was the rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the Marcos gratis–that everybody was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that clever device. I said:

“And please fill them up to the middle mark, too; and add that to the bill.”

He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I took them with me. I couldn’t venture to tell him that the miller-gun was a little invention of my own, and that I had officially ordered that every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them at government price–which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeeper got that, not the government. We furnished them for nothing.

The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. He had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaul with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again.

CHAPTER XXXII

DOWLEY’S HUMILIATION

Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting. They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in addition to the dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family: for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit’s; also a sizeable deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people’s eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructed the Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up and down, all night, to see if it wasn’t nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure–not to say delirium–was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. The king had slept just as usual–like the dead. The Marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were. Which all went for nothing: he didn’t notice any change.

It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is just a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be out of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. Even the king’s reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at first. I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer; but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing stand at that, and not elaborate it any. Because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn’t warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain.

Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum. Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; and they are among the very first to find it out, too. He told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day’s work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade–or “mystery” as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn’t yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine.

“I remember me of that day!” the wheelwright sang out, with enthusiasm.

“And I likewise!” cried the mason. “I would not believe they were thine own; in faith I could not.”

“Nor other!” shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. “I was like to lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap been stealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that.”

Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter.

“And now consider what is come to pass,” said he, impressively. “Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table.” He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added– “and eight times salt meat.”

“It is even true,” said the wheelwright, with bated breath.

“I know it of mine own knowledge,” said the mason, in the same reverent fashion.

“On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year,” added the master smith, with solemnity. “I leave it to your own consciences, friends, if this is not also true?”

“By my head, yes,” cried the mason.

“I can testify it–and I do,” said the wheelwright.

“And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is.” He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added: “Speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would speak; an I were not here.”

“Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three,” said the wheelwright, with deep respect.

“And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to eat and drink from withal,” said the mason, impressively. “And I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth.”

“Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones,” said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, “and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth we are equals–equals”–and he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it.

The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness.

The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. That was a notch above even the blacksmith’s domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise; you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine new stools–whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of every guest. Then she brought two more–as calmly as she could. Sensation again–with awed murmurs. Again she brought two– walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, and the mason muttered:

“There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence.”

As the dame turned away, Marco couldn’t help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it:

“These suffice; leave the rest.”

So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn’t have played the hand better myself.

From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped “Oh’s” and “Ah’s,” and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery–new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper’s son emerged from space and said he had come to collect.

“That’s all right,” I said, indifferently. “What is the amount? give us the items.”

Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco’s:

2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700 2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000 2 men’s suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800 1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600 8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000 1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000 2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000

He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.

“Is that all?” I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.

“All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like you, I will sepa–”

“It is of no consequence,” I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; “give me the grand total, please.”

The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:

“Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!”

The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of:

“God be with us in the day of disaster!”

The clerk hastened to say:

“My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you–”

I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seen them stare!

The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and– I interrupted:

“What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole. Keep the change.”

There was an amazed murmur to this effect:

“Verily this being is _made_ of money! He throweth it away even as if it were dirt.”

The blacksmith was a crushed man.

The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said to Marco and his wife:

“Good folk, here is a little trifle for you”–handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:

“Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to.”

Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don’t know that I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith–well, he was simply mashed. Land! I wouldn’t have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round–all for a family of three; the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that’s been stepped on by a cow.

CHAPTER XXXIII

SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY

However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy to do–in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn’t ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can’t ever get his full growth. You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that’s the end of it–he knuckles down. You can’t insult him after that. No, I don’t mean quite that; of course you _can_ insult him, I only mean it’s difficult; and so, unless you’ve got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn’t pay to try. I had the smith’s reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner’s in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world–after God–Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.

The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort–business and wages, of course. At a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom–whose lord was King Bagdemagus–as compared with the state of things in my own region. They had the “protection” system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way. Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look:

“In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?”

“Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent.”

The smith’s face beamed with joy. He said:

“With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanic get–carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?”

“On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day.”

“Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, but not the others–they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more–yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day. I’ve paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. ‘Rah for protection–to Sheol with free-trade!”

And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn’t scare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth–drive him _all_ in– drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked:

“What do you pay a pound for salt?”

“A hundred milrays.”

“We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton–when you buy it?” That was a neat hit; it made the color come.

“It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milrays the pound.”

“_We_ pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs?”

“Fifty milrays the dozen.”

“We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer?”

“It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint.”

“We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent. What do you pay for wheat?”

“At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel.”

“We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man’s tow-linen suit?”

“Thirteen cents.”

“We pay six. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?”

“We pay eight cents, four mills.”

“Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents.” I prepared now to sock it to him. I said: “Look here, dear friend, _what’s become of your high wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago?_”–and I looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all. “What’s become of those noble high wages of yours?–I seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me.”

But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all! he didn’t grasp the situation at all, didn’t know he had walked into a trap, didn’t discover that he was _in_ a trap. I could have shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out:

“Marry, I seem not to understand. It is _proved_ that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that thou’st knocked therefrom the stuffing?–an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted me to hear it.”

Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind–if you might call it mind. My position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more? However, I must try:

“Why, look here, brother Dowley, don’t you see? Your wages are merely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_.”

“Hear him! They are the _double_–ye have confessed it yourself.”

“Yes-yes, I don’t deny that at all. But that’s got nothing to do with it; the _amount_ of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it. The thing is, how much can you _buy_ with your wages?– that’s the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five–”

“There–ye’re confessing it again, ye’re confessing it again!”

“Confound it, I’ve never denied it, I tell you! What I say is this. With us _half_ a dollar buys more than a _dollar_ buys with you–and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense, that our wages are _higher_ than yours.”

He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:

“Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye’ve just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath ye take it back.”

“Oh, great Scott, isn’t it possible to get such a simple thing through your head? Now look here–let me illustrate. We pay four cents for a woman’s stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills more than _double_. What do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm?”

“Two mills a day.”

“Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day; and–”

“Again ye’re conf–”

“Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you’ll understand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day–7 weeks’ work; but ours earns hers in forty days–two days _short_ of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and two days’ wages left, to buy something else with. There–_now_ you understand it!”

He looked–well, he merely looked dubious, it’s the most I can say; so did the others. I waited–to let the thing work. Dowley spoke at last–and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn’t gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, with a trifle of hesitancy:

“But–but–ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one.”

Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chanced another flyer:

“Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles:

“1 pound of salt;
1 dozen eggs;
1 dozen pints of beer;
1 bushel of wheat;
1 tow-linen suit;
5 pounds of beef;
5 pounds of mutton.

“The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working days to earn the money–5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us and work 32 days at _half_ the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days’ work, and he will have about half a week’s wages over. Carry it through the year; he would save nearly a week’s wages every two months, _your_ man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks’ wages in a year, your man not a cent. _Now_ I reckon you understand that ‘high wages’ and ‘low wages’ are phrases that don’t mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will _buy_ the most!”

It was a crusher.

But, alas! it didn’t crush. No, I had to give it up. What those people valued was _high wages_; it didn’t seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not. They stood for “protection,” and swore by it, which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down. But it didn’t do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs.

Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat, but what of that? That didn’t soften the smart any. And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that those others were sorry for me–which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt–wouldn’t _you_ have struck below the belt to get even? Yes, you would; it is simply human nature. Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it; I’m only saying that I was mad, and _anybody_ would have done it.

Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don’t plan out a love-tap; no, that isn’t my way; as long as I’m going to hit him at all, I’m going to hit him a lifter. And I don’t jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that I’m going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he’s flat on his back, and he can’t tell for the life of him how it all happened. That is the way I went for brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn’t have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up:

“Boys, there’s a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too. There are written laws–they perish; but there are also unwritten laws–_they_ are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages: it says they’ve got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that’s the wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that’s as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can tell you what people’s wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

“What, goodman, what!”

“Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6.”

“I would’t I might die now and live then!” interrupted Smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.

“And that isn’t all; they’ll get their board besides–such as it is: it won’t bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later–pay attention now–a mechanic’s wages will be–mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic’s wages will then be _twenty_ cents a day!”

There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason murmured, with raised eyes and hands:

“More than three weeks’ pay for one day’s work!”

“Riches!–of a truth, yes, riches!” muttered Marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement.

“Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there’ll be at least _one_ country where the mechanic’s average wage will be _two hundred_ cents a day!”

It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burner said prayerfully:

“Might I but live to see it!”

“It is the income of an earl!” said Smug.

“An earl, say ye?” said Dowley; “ye could say more than that and speak no lie; there’s no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath an income like to that. Income of an earl–mf! it’s the income of an angel!”

“Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. In that remote day, that man will earn, with _one_ week’s work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of _fifty_ weeks to earn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?”

“Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate that fixes the wages.”

“Doesn’t ask any of those poor devils to _help_ him fix their wages for them, does he?”

“Hm! That _were_ an idea! The master that’s to pay him the money is the one that’s rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice.”

“Yes–but I thought the other man might have some little trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall have who _do_ work. You see? They’re a ‘combine’–a trade union, to coin a new phrase–who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundred years hence–so says the unwritten law–the ‘combine’ will be the other way, and then how these fine people’s posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions! Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing; and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation to settle.”

“Do ye believe–”

“That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed. And he will be strong and able, then.”

“Brave times, brave times, of a truth!” sneered the prosperous smith.

“Oh,–and there’s another detail. In that day, a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to.”

“What?”

“It’s true. Moreover, a magistrate won’t be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man wants to or not.”

“Will there be _no_ law or sense in that day?”

“Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave town whenever he wants to, if the wages don’t suit him!–and they can’t put him in the pillory for it.”

“Perdition catch such an age!” shouted Dowley, in strong indignation. “An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and respect for authority! The pillory–”

“Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. I think the pillory ought to be abolished.”

“A most strange idea. Why?”

“Well, I’ll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory for a capital crime?”

“No.”

“Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small offense and then kill him?”

There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the first time, the smith wasn’t up and ready. The company noticed it. Good effect.

“You don’t answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn’t going to use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some little offense that didn’t amount to anything in the world? The mob try to have some fun with him, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?”

“Yes.”

“Then they throw dead cats at him, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against him–and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another–stones and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don’t they?”

“There is no doubt of it.”

“As a rule he is crippled for life, isn’t he?–jaws broken, teeth smashed out?–or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off?– or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?”

“It is true, God knoweth it.”

“And if he is unpopular he can depend on _dying_, right there in the stocks, can’t he?”

“He surely can! One may not deny it.”

“I take it none of _you_ are unpopular–by reason of pride or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? _You_ wouldn’t think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?”

Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn’t betray it by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the stocks to know what a man’s chance in them was, and they would never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick death by hanging.

“Well, to change the subject–for I think I’ve established my point that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of our laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keep still and don’t report me, _you_ will get the stocks if anybody informs on you.”

“Ah, but that would serve you but right,” said Dowley, “for you _must_ inform. So saith the law.”

The others coincided.

“Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there’s one thing which certainly isn’t fair. The magistrate fixes a mechanic’s wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says that if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything _over_ that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did it and doesn’t inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Now it seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil–”

Oh, I tell _you_ it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them to go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.

A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so little time to work it up in.

But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little. I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn’t expecting to scare them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and report–well, it was awful, and they couldn’t seem to recover from the shock, they couldn’t seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren’t any better than so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end. But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course, they wanted to, but they couldn’t dare.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES

Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must get up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life again. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get the hang of his miller-gun–turned to stone, just in the attitude he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explain its mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it was mysterious enough, for that race and that age.

I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they were totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreled tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot wouldn’t hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In the gun were two sizes–wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort that were several times larger. They were money. The mustard-seed shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun was a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or in your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes– one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal cost nothing, and the money couldn’t be counterfeited, for I was the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower. “Paying the shot” soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knew it would still be passing men’s lips, away down in the nineteenth century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated.

The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now, I was so uneasy–for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to detect a complacent something in the king’s eye which seemed to indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose such a time as this?

I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the subject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me. I wanted to whisper in his ear, “Man, we are in awful danger! every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men’s confidence; _don’t_ waste any of this golden time.” But of course I couldn’t do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we were conspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing and drumming that I couldn’t take in a word; but presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king’s batteries, as if out of remote distance:

“–were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early from the tree–”

The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other’s eyes in a surprised and troubled way.

“–whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state–”

The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear.

“–yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage–”

The wild light of terror began to glow in these men’s eyes, and one of them muttered, “These be errors, every one–God hath surely smitten the mind of this farmer.” I was in miserable apprehension; I sat upon thorns.

“–and further instancing the known truth that in the case of animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality of morals–”

They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, “The one would betray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill them!” they flung themselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king’s eye! He might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in his line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. “St. George for Britain!” and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, but I laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up and came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating this, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn’t tell us from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with what might was left in them. Hammering each other–for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe from intrusion.

Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around; he was nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled the king’s sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marco there, no Phyllis there! They had gone to the road for help, sure. I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later. We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into the shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excited peasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head. They were making a world of noise, but that couldn’t hurt anybody; the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths we would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then came another sound–dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. It magnified our contract–we must find running water.

We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind and modified to a murmur. We struck a stream and darted into it. We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great bough sticking out over the water. We climbed up on this bough, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck our trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. And then for another while they didn’t. No doubt the dogs had found the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again.

When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we could crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it worth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect. We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt.

Presently we heard it coming–and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream. Louder–louder–next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone.

“I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to them,” said I, “but I don’t mind the disappointment. Come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We’ve flanked them. Dark is coming on, presently. If we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from somebody’s pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough.”

We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen.

“Yes,” said I, “they’re baffled, they’ve given it up, they’re on their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let them go by.”

So we climbed back. The king listened a moment and said:

“They still search–I wit the sign. We did best to abide.”

He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noise approached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said:

“They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took the water.”

“Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hoping better things.”

The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt from the other bank, and said:

“An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. Ye will do well to send a man up it.”

“Marry, that we will do!”

I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it. But, don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started.

Matters were serious now. We remained still, and awaited developments. The peasant toiled his difficult way up. The king raised himself up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer’s head arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were treed, and prisoners. Another man started up; the bridging bough was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge. The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the bridge. For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach. The king’s spirits rose, his joy was limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold the tree against the whole country-side.

However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore they called off the assault and began to debate other plans. They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer. We had no objections. A stone might possibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn’t very likely; we were well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point. If they would but waste half an hour in stone-throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feeling very well satisfied. We could smile; almost laugh.

But we didn’t; which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted. Before the stones had been raging through the leaves and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice a smell. A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation– it was smoke! Our game was up at last. We recognized that. When smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors. I got enough breath to say:

“Proceed, my liege; after you is manners.”

The king gasped:

“Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk, and leave me the other. Then will we fight. Let each pile his dead according to his own fashion and taste.”

Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struck the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might. The powwow and racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and thick-falling blows. Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst of the crowd, and a voice shouted:

“Hold–or ye are dead men!”

How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentleman inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants:

“What are ye doing to these people?”

“They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and–”

“Ye know not whence? Do ye pretend ye know them not?”

“Most honored sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangers and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent and bloodthirsty madmen that ever–”

“Peace! Ye know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye? And whence are ye? Explain.”

“We are but peaceful strangers, sir,” I said, “and traveling upon our own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquainted here. We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and protection these people would have killed us. As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent or bloodthirsty.”

The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: “Lash me these animals to their kennels!”

The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the bush. The shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. Meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us. We were lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants:

“Bring the led-horses and mount these people.”

“Yes, my lord.”

We were placed toward the rear, among the servants. We traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles. My lord went immediately to his room, after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morning we breakfasted and made ready to start.

My lord’s chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said:

“Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril.”

We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day’s journey beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of the square, to see what might be the object of interest. It was the remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! So they had been dragging their chains about, all this weary time. That poor husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases had been added to the gang. The king was not interested, and wanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity. I could not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. And by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of “our glorious British liberties!”

I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering I was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and–

Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on. The king burst out in a fury, and said:

“What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?”

My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly:

“Put up the slaves and sell them!”

_Slaves!_ The word had a new sound–and how unspeakably awful! The king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force; but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen of the rascal’s servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were helpless, with our hands bound behind us. We so loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. The orator said:

“If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear–the God-given liberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter! (Applause.) Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs.”

“What proofs?”

“Proof that ye are freemen.”

Ah–I remembered! I came to myself; I said nothing. But the king stormed out:

“Thou’rt insane, man. It were better, and more in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are _not_ freemen.”

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws; by words, not by effects. They take a _meaning_, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself.

All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned away, no longer interested. The orator said–and this time in the tones of business, not of sentiment:

“An ye do not know your country’s laws, it were time ye learned them. Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. Ye may be freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. The law is clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not.”

I said:

“Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us only time to send to the Valley of Holiness–”

“Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may not hope to have them granted. It would cost much time, and would unwarrantably inconvenience your master–”

“_Master_, idiot!” stormed the king. “I have no master, I myself am the m–”

“Silence, for God’s sake!”

I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in trouble enough already; it could not help us any to give these people the notion that we were lunatics.